Cloudless May (24 page)

He took the rings directly to Mme Vayrac. She was alone, and welcomed him with the smile she kept for good-looking young men. She put an arm round and kissed him with frank pleasure, running her hands down his sides before she told him to sit down.

“Why have you come to see me? You must want something.”

“To see you, my dear Léonie.”

Mme Vayrac's laughter shook her soft body. “Yes, yes,” she murmured, “now tell me why you've come.”

“I want a little money.”

“So you came to me,” she said, smiling. “My dear pretty boy, I have no money. Let me give you a brandy instead.”

“Very well. But I have something to show you,” Derval said, pouting.

Mme Vayrac looked closely at each ring. You could see the figures falling into place behind her eyes, behind the sluttish good-humour.

“Where did you get them?”

“From the Baronne de Chavigny.”

“What?”

“No, no,” Derval said, rolling his eyes. “She gave them to
me because she's anti-Semitic and she hopes I'm going to rescue France from the Jews.”

“You've made a beginning,” Mme Vayrac said cynically. “So you want me to buy these? Very well, my dear boy, I'll give you a thousand francs.”

Derval was sharply disappointed. “They're worth far more than that.”

“Of course. You could get more from Naudin, in the High Street. But you don't want your Baroness to see them in his window? I'll make it eleven hundred.”

“Twelve.”

She came back so quickly with the money that she caught him posing before a mirror. He was not, as he would have been with anyone else, abashed. Neither lusts nor vanities were shocking when Mme Vayrac looked at them from eyes so thumbed by experience that their surface had become greasy and clouded. He put the notes in his pocket and asked,

“Were you satisfied with the article I printed yesterday about Edgar? I did it rather well, I thought.”

She looked at him with a severity that made him feel small. “You'll find I've added five hundred francs to the twelve. Wasn't that what we agreed?”

Derval said “Yes,” sullenly.

Mme Vayrac patted his arm. “Now, my dear boy,” she said in a warm voice, “I'm very fond of you. You know I adore Edgar, and I thought for a moment you were sneering at him.”

He began vehemently to protest. The door opened and Jacques de Saint-Jouin came in. He greeted Mme Vayrac with a politeness a shade too good to be real: it underlined in the most light-hearted way that he was condescending to a Mme Vayrac. With the same charming insolence he said to Derval,

“What—you here, my dear Gabriel? Splendid! I thought you always inked yourself to the bone at this time in the evening?”

He was very much at home. He seated himself on the couch beside his hostess, stretching his legs, and chattered to her. Derval listened without putting in a word. He saw, with exasperation, that although Mme Vayrac talked to both of them with the same familiarity and warmth, she treated Saint-Jouin with respect: he was torn between jealousy and quivers of
pleasure that for the first time since they met Saint-Jouin had used his Christian name. He admired Saint-Jouin and longed frantically to impress him. But what hope had he of impressing a young man who added to physical beauty the delicious arrogance of his family? Derval lolled in his chair with false ease, waiting for a chance to show off his intelligence.

“My dear Léonie,” Saint-Jouin cried, “they're even talking of cancelling my show! And when I'd arranged every item. The Prefect has gone into a spin—perhaps his dear Marguerite has been nagging him. My God, what a bore this war is. Do you know what I think? It would be a sound idea to let Hitler run France for a while. At least we should have peace and I could get away from this barbaric life. I suppose he'd want paying to do it. But really, do I care a hoot about Morocco and the rest? What use is a lot of sand to me?” He threw Derval a smile. “You agree with me, Gabriel, old boy, don't you?”

Again Derval quivered with happiness. He sat up and drawled,

“But we should be infinitely richer without our empire! If someone would only take the expense of it off our hands. . . .”

Saint-Jouin had watched him with a fine smile. “Do you really think so? What a pity no one reads your articles. I'm talking nonsense—my servant does. I shouldn't be surprised if you have quite a following among him and his friends.”

Mme Vayrac laughed. Furiously mortified, Derval said to her,

“But Saint-Jouin doesn't read anything except the sports news, he can't even write a letter.”

Saint-Jouin had snubbed him purely out of mischief; he now turned his back and let him sit glowering and sulking, while he talked to Mme Vayrac.

“I met a ravishing creature on the stairs. Do tell me who she is. Tall and red-haired. The very type I like.”

“No, no, my dear boy,” Mme Vayrac said, laughing. “She's not for you. You're quite right, she's charming—and she deserves to have a charming life. She shall have it.”

“You have no aesthetic conscience. You'll part with this beautiful creature to one of your tottering clients without a qualm. Now, if you let me have her——”

“She would starve,” Mme Vayrac said. “That's enough,
let's talk about something else. Tell me, the news is quite bad, isn't it? Is it beginning to be serious?”

“Not at all,” Saint-Jouin cried. “It won't be allowed to become serious. I can assure you. My mother writes to me from Paris that peace terms are already being discussed. She has a cousin in Germany who is very close to Goering, and we hear regularly. Believe me, there's not going to be any romantic nonsense. Something quite reasonable will be arranged.” He turned to Derval.
“You
must know all about it,” he said with a little air of deference. “You literary chaps hear everything.”

“I have no German cousins, and my mother writes to me about the neighbours,” Derval said. He was surprised that he was able to speak coolly: he would have given both his ears to produce a cousin friendly with Ciano.

“But how charming,” Saint-Jouin said carelessly.

Derval's rage got the better of him—fed by his outraged vanity. For a moment he forgot that it was not Saint-Jouin who had cursed his novel and wounded him in that delicate organ, the pride of a writer who is certain he has enemies. He controlled himself.

“Not at all charming,” he said coldly. “My parents are simple people who do their duty.”

“What could possibly be more idyllic?” Saint-Jouin cried. He was amused by Derval's irritated vanity. He quite liked Derval, and had a genuine admiration for what he called his terrible intellect. Mark my words, he used to say: one of these days he'll put us all in a book; I warn you, he's abominably clever.

Mme Vayrac leaned forward. She put a hand on Saint-Jouin and with the other patted Derval's cheek. She spoke in her slow voice, that curious voice, full of warmth, coaxing, and yet muted. You could imagine her quieting a child, or grieving, but not scolding with it.

“You must both go now. One of my tottering clients, a Senator—you see I'm not afraid to tell you—is coming to look at my niece—the girl you saw on the stairs, my dear Saint-Jouin. Off you go, children. I love you both.”

On the landing Saint-Jouin slipped his arm in Derval's, and began talking to him as he would to a nervous horse. He could not help a slight smile at Derval's eagerness to be soothed
and flattered; he hid it quickly. Nothing bored him so much as other people's unhappiness, he never listened to a story about illness or tragedy, even when the sufferer was his close friend; he would, if it did not inconvenience him too much, take trouble to ward off an unhappiness threatening one of his friends, driven to it by his horror of being involved—“Robert,” his friends said, “is so warm-hearted, so sensitive . . .” At this moment, Derval was convinced that he had misunderstood Saint-Jouin; no such friendly and modest young man could have been insolent or cruel.

“A bit thick, don't you think, old Mother Vayrac? She makes a fortune out of her
nieces.
What an old whore, eh?”

“Yes, yes, I agree,” Derval said eagerly.

They had reached the foot of the stairs. Saint-Jouin let go Derval's arm, and lifted one of the curtains covering the wall.

“You know this house was built for a canon of the Abbey Church in the sixteenth century? Yes, really. This passage used to be a cloister. Some time in the next century it was walled-in and panelled; the panels were painted by—a famous artist, I've forgotten his name. If you put your nose to them you'll see traces of the painting, it was all about a female saint—a miracle of some sort, but I forget what.”

It was precisely and neatly a miracle. From dismembered fragments, the handle of a tool, a bone, lying among guessed-at forms of flowers and leaves, there sprang so clear an image of violent and tragic death, of hands turning to roots and foreheads bound by grass, that you could think the artist had simply left on the walls the print of an agonised idea, without taking pains to draw it. The impression of greedy voluptuous forms came from just those panels where the colour had completely vanished. . . . Saint-Jouin let the curtain swing back.

“How d'you know so much about this house?” Derval asked inquisitively.

“Oh, it belonged to my family. An ancestor of ours built it. My great-grandfather sold it to a tradesman of some sort. We used to have about when I was a child a book of copies of the paintings, a tutor of mine was keen on them.”

Saint-Jouin spoke with an air of frivolity—and indeed he was completely indifferent. Yet it was only pride in his family
that made him remember the paintings. He expected Derval to make a flattering comment. That would have pleased him. But Derval was too much the egoist, and too touchy, to think of it.

They strolled together as far as the embankment. Pressing their hands on the wall, its stones still warm, they watched the Loire running in the darkness.

“I can smell the sea in her,” Derval said.

“But for this fatuous war,” Saint-Jouin said carelessly, “I should be on leave.”

Catherine had been home a week. She was beginning to feel—not safe, she had given up looking for safety in her mother or her mother's house—but she was happy. She had disposed her life inside the life of the household. All the arrangements Mme de Freppel had made before she came, to avoid trouble when Catherine wanted to be with her, were no use. In the morning Catherine drank her coffee in her own room, and vanished into the garden; she never offered to go into Seuilly with her mother; she showed no interest in her, no curiosity. Mme de Freppel had rehearsed an emotional little scene, in which she would tell her that in every real sense Bergeot was her father now. It was a failure.

“Monsieur de Freppel——” she began in a calm voice.

“My father came to see me last term,” Catherine said lightly.

“You never told me.”

“I didn't think about it,” Catherine said, smiling.

This smile baffled her mother. She dared not make a fuss, since it was important not to rouse in Catherine any sympathy for her father. And she was defeated by the candour and indifference of Catherine's smile. Was she really candid? Or was it the fine edge of guile? She felt completely at a loss.

“What did he want?” she asked in a friendly voice.

“I think, nothing. He stayed an hour, and told me about the
election when he was elected to the Senate, and the troubles he has with a doctor who is a Freemason. That was all.”

Her mother was afraid to break through this indifference. How little she knew about this girl. Four years' absence had rubbed off every mark by which a mother, recognising herself in her child, knows how to act. Catherine bore none of those touches a careful mother leaves on the creature she has handled since birth. She was unsigned and new; her eyes, reflecting her naïve egoism, were clouded only by her own stammering thoughts. The mother felt a sudden anguish: it was partly guilt and partly pity for herself—and it was anguish, and as long as she lived it would never wholly leave her.

“You know why I left your father.”

Catherine said nothing. She smiled in a friendly way.

“He was cruel——”

“He's very boring,” Catherine said. “He talks nonsense.”

In the same moment when she felt pleased, Mme de Freppel thought: And perhaps I bore her? She began to talk quickly and clumsily about Émile, his kindness in looking after their affairs, how devoted he was to Catherine herself, how intelligent, and reliable, and sweet-tempered. The girl listened with the same smiling friendly look, and the instant her mother hesitated, at a loss for the next phrase, kissed her lightly, and said,

“That's quite all right. We needn't talk about it. You know I'm very happy at home, you needn't worry about anything. I should like, though, to do some work at the hospital. Perhaps Émile”—she marched calmly over the name—“can help me.”

There was nothing for her mother to do but accept this re-writing of her little scene. And pretend—for the sake of her self-respect—that she had collaborated in it.

Catherine had fixed on a part of the garden where no one went. Hidden from the windows of the Manor House by a bush, she could lie out on the wall level with the lawn—the reflection of its lowest stones ran out broken and flickering into the Loire—and watch the island moored opposite the house being tugged at by the current. She was long-sighted. On the opposite bank a pair of magpies darted between the willows; she counted the seconds of their flight across the space of blond air. An even number—and her mother would forget that she
ought to explain herself and her life. Anything but that! Catherine thought. Anything, but not the embarrassment of having to watch an emotion which, since it affected people as old as her parents and Monsieur Émile Bergeot, struck her as ridiculous and unreal. She determined from today to live by making use only of the simplest statements. . . . I am hungry. I like swimming in the open sea. Trees make me smile. Look at the magpies. . . . Instead of forming the shortest arc, they chose to shoot up and down, up and down, like the jet from a fountain—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. . . . I shall keep out of her way for a few days. I don't want to know anything about anything. . . . She shut her eyes, stretching herself on the wall, like a lizard. I am warm. The sun is a warm fleece. . . . Suddenly she remembered pushing into her pocket two letters from friends who left school before she did, and had not yet given up hope of getting replies to their letters. She opened one. Valérie was engaged, and her young man of course was in the Maginot—“Why don't you write to me?” And the other: “I am learning to drive an ambulance; it's thrilling, marvellous; why don't you write? I am forgetting what you look like and you know I live on my memories. At nineteen I am an old woman. Your Bella.”